Coming Home

‘An accident,’ Honor had responded. ‘They do happen.’

‘Aye, they do, and this house has had more than its fair share of them,’ he had answered bluntly.

‘I can’t believe that people are actually refusing to work on the house because of some silly story of its being haunted,’ Honor had complained to her cousin a few days later when he invited her up to Fitzburgh Place to have dinner. ‘I mean … it’s just so … so … ridiculous.’

‘Not as far as the Cooke family are concerned,’ he had retorted. ‘They’re closely related to the gypsy tribe the girl was supposed to have come from, and in a small town such things aren’t easily forgotten.’

‘Oh, I’m not saying that there wasn’t an affair nor that it didn’t end tragically. It’s just this silly idea of the house being haunted.’

‘Mmm … well, the Cookes are a stubborn lot, a law unto themselves in many ways. You could try bringing someone in from Chester.’

‘I could try paying nearly double what I should be paying to a high-priced fancy builder, as well,’ Honor retorted drily, adding with a twinkle in her eye, ‘I’m beginning to think my “bargain” home with its peppercorn rent wasn’t quite the bargain I first supposed.’

‘Ah well, my dear, you know what they say,’ Lord Astlegh told her jovially. ‘Caveat emptor.’

‘Let the buyer beware,’ she translated.

REMEMBERING the pleasant evening she had spent with her cousin, Honor smiled. He was a kind man, well-read and interesting to talk with. A widower now without any children to inherit from him, he was determined to do everything he could to safeguard the estate from being broken up when it eventually passed into the hands of the next in line. It was to that end that he was trying to make the estate as self-supporting as possible, using a variety of innovative means.

The outbuildings that he had converted into small, self-contained working units for a variety of local craftspeople were now in such demand that he had a waiting list of eager tenants. The antiques fairs and other events that the estate hosted brought in not just extra income but visitors to the working units and to the house and gardens and its tea and gift shops.

He was now talking about renovating the orangery and getting it licenced for weddings, and Honor had to admit it would make a perfect setting for them. Large enough to hold even the most lavish of receptions, the orangery ran along one wall of the enclosed kitchen garden. Enthusiastically, he had described to her how he planned to have the garden subtly altered with the addition of bowers of white climbing roses and a fountain.

As she listened to him, Honor had discovered that most of his ideas came originally from the man who was responsible for organising the antiques fairs—Guy Cooke.

‘Nice chap,’ he had told Honor. ‘Must introduce you to him and his wife. Pretty girl. One of the Crightons but on the wrong side of the blanket. Still, can’t say too much about that with our colourful family history, can we?’

THE CAT MIAOWED demandingly and to oblige it Honor went to get some food. Tomorrow she would make a concerted effort to find herself a builder—unless fate was kind enough to send her one.

‘A HERBALIST! I can’t see Gramps … Do you think that’s a good idea?’ Max Crighton asked his wife dubiously. ‘He’s bad enough about conventional medicine and I don’t think—’

‘We don’t have to tell him that she’s a herbalist,’ Maddy said gently. ‘I don’t want to deceive him, but I’m so worried about him, Max. He looks so weak and frail even the children are beginning to notice.’

‘Mmm. I know what you mean,’ Max agreed absently, picking up one of the fresh scones Maddy had just placed on a wire rack to cool and then shaking his fingers as it burned them.

‘Wait until they’re cool,’ Maddy scolded him. ‘You know they’ll give you indigestion if you don’t.’

‘Indigestion.’ Max’s eyes danced with laughter. ‘That’s what marriage does for you. The woman you love stops seeing you as someone who is sexually exciting and thinks of you instead as someone with indigestion.’

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Maddy responded with a small smile.

‘No?’ Max questioned, his voice muffled as he took her in his arms and buried his mouth in the warm, soft, creamy, cooking-scented curve of her throat.

‘Nooooo …’ Maddy sighed.

The truth was that it would be hard to find a man who was more sexually attractive than her husband. Max wore his sexuality with very much the same panache and air of self-mockery with which he wore his barrister’s robes, a kind of dangerously sexy tongue-in-cheek, wry amusement at the reaction he was causing, coupled with a subtle but oh so sexy unspoken invitation to share in his amusement at it.

‘Why is that lady looking at my daddy?’ Emma had once asked Maddy as Max had met them both on their way home from school. He had stopped his car and got out, causing all the other mothers to gawp at him with varying degrees of bemused appreciation.

‘The lady’ in question had been almost as stunningly attractive as Max was himself, but for all the notice he had taken of her she might as well have been the same age as his aunt Ruth.

To the envy of Maddy’s friends, Max was a totally devoted husband and father.

It hadn’t always been that way. The Max who had married her had been a dangerous predatory man who had treated the emotions of those closest to him with a callousness it was hard to imagine now.

If, by some horrible blow of fate, the changes within him brought about by his frighteningly close brush with death in Jamaica should ever be reversed and he should revert to the man she had first met, Maddy knew that she could not and would not go back to being the girl she had been, the girl who had such low self-esteem that she had quietly and humbly allowed Max to emotionally abuse her.

Those days were gone and so was that Maddy. Now she and Max were equal partners in their marriage. Max didn’t just love her; he respected her, as well.

‘Where are one, two and three?’ he murmured against her throat as he nibbled hungrily, referring to their three children.

‘At your mother’s,’ Maddy told him huskily.

‘Mmm … let’s go upstairs.’

‘What’s wrong with down here?’ Maddy teased him daringly, giving him a flirtatious look. ‘Ben never comes in here and there’s no one else in the house.’

‘Here?’

Max raised his eyebrows, but Maddy could tell that her suggestion had excited him.

‘You look so wonderfully sexy in your court clothes,’ she whispered in a small breathy voice.

Max started to laugh but immediately joined in her game, reaching out towards the tray of scones and saying sternly, ‘So what is this? I see that one scone is missing and you, wench, are the only one who could have taken it. Such a theft demands a very heavy sentence.’

‘No … no …’ Maddy cried, trying to tug her hand out of Max’s grasp, but he refused to let her go, skilfully backing her against the table.

‘A very heavy punishment,’ he repeated huskily. ‘Unless, mayhap, you have not eaten the stolen sweetmeat but secreted it about your person, in your pocket, perchance,’ he demanded. ‘Or …’

As his hands lifted towards her breasts, Maddy exploded into laughter. ‘Oh, Max.’ But as she saw the look in her husband’s eye, her laughter died.

‘Oh, Max, what?’ he challenged as he moved his body over hers and slid his free hand inside the blouse he had just unfastened. His palm felt heavy and warm against her breast, her nipple hardening immediately.

‘We can’t,’ Maddy breathed. ‘Not here …’

‘No?’ Max challenged her, letting go of her wrist to push her blouse off her shoulder and un-clip the front fastening of her bra before lifting her onto the table.

An hour later, a flushed and floury Maddy just managed to finish fastening her blouse before her three children and her mother-in-law came into the kitchen.

‘Jenny.’ Maddy beamed as she responded to the older woman’s affectionate hug. ‘Thanks for having them. Have you been good for Grandma?’ she asked her two elder children whilst Max expertly scooped their youngest out of Jenny’s arms.

‘Your skirt is all floury,’ Leo pointed out to his mother.

‘Yes, and so is your blouse,’ Emma chirped.

Blushing, Maddy turned away.

‘Mummy’s been very busy,’ Max told them tongue-in-cheek.